Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a vehicle occupant information acquisition device and a vehicle control system that acquire information regarding vehicle occupants.
Related Art
There are technologies by which seat arrangements, which are the positions and facing directions or the like of plural seats installed in an automobile, can be changed into various arrangements.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2006-96220 discloses setting a seat arrangement in accordance with a person who requires assistance. In specific terms, when operations of an automatic seat arrangement device are started up, luggage information is read from IC tags or the like by a reader device. Then, taking into account equipment information relating to seats, such as whether a child seat is equipped and the like, human body characteristics are determined, including whether each vehicle occupant is a person who requires assistance or an able-bodied person. On the basis of the determination results, an optimum seat arrangement is specified. If an occupant is a person who requires assistance, automatic seat arrangement is implemented before seating, triggered by opening of a door, and notice is given of this implementation. If an occupant is an able-bodied person, an automatic seat arrangement is implemented if an operation button is pressed within a predetermined time period after the occupant sits down.
In recent years, various technologies relating to autonomous driving have been proposed. Technologies have been disclosed that enable a seat arrangement in which a seat on which a driver is sitting is oriented the opposite way to a vehicle progress direction (oriented rearward) during autonomous driving mode. In this seat arrangement, an occupant on a seat at the vehicle rear side and the driver are in a mutually facing seating state.
However, in an autonomous driving mode in which mutually facing seating is enabled, if the seat on which the driver is sitting is turned to be oriented to the vehicle progress direction, when the vehicle switches from autonomous driving mode to manual driving mode, it takes time for the driver to switch their mental attitude and their postural attitude and to become acquainted with the movements and situation of the vehicle. Therefore, when the vehicle switches to manual driving mode, the occupant sitting on the driving seat may not be ready to be a driver.
There are further situations in which the condition of a driver may not be suitable for driving such as, for example, the driver not being in a wakeful state during autonomous driving mode and the like.